THE WARP AND WEFT
of all things in the pre-perceptual
soup, the rise and fall of ideas,
denials, invitations, congratulations—
the give and take of foodstuffs, drinkstuffs,
stuffing with or without oysters.
The bric-a-brac of meaningless chatter
mounting to the eaves of my house,
lipping up over the sill and spilling
into my abode, though I don’t care,
I’m immune, I carry a lighter and some
fluid. The hustle and bustle of pedestrians
filing in and out of the bank without
saying thank you as I hold the door,
except of course for the diminutive
man from India, whose smile is infectious,
and I wonder about his lineage. The this
and that which I forget or remember,
floating in my chaise lounge on a Thursday
wandered from the circuit of the seasons
as a stadium crowd in Belfast erupts from
the television I hold in my lap, its corner
pressing into my crotch. The yin and yang
swirling into a gray smear of seafoam
clinging to the baleen of the dead whale
which two Korean children prod
with a fractured oar. The stop and go
of the boulevard rank with consumers
whose appetites assault the pristine
horizon where a lime orchard languishes.
The rise and shine of seven orbs—
in a neglected quadrant of sky—glimpsed
by the invalid through blind-slits in her
hospital suite on the outskirts of Corpus Christi.
The works and days, and the days without work,
which emit like wine from a Savior’s
saffron-scented hand. The rock and roll
of the skiff adrift on indifferent swells—
the ebb and flow of that tide. The gentle
inhale and exhale of a black cat named Taco,
who sleeps while coiled inside an upturned helmet.
Words, and the silence that follows them.



THE PROUST YEARS
We saw them coming a long way off. We were frolicking, rasping, blithering, smacking foes with leather straps, shouting under bridges, calling out to wayward stars whisking toward some oblivious moon soaring past the image of a furloughed miscreant with a mouth full of oblong complaints like barbed wishes doused with oxidized honey. Yet, none of this fazed us. We went about our business. We purchased properties and ran for office. We disciplined children and listened to Motown albums while jackals tore speedy hares to flesh-strips. Meanwhile, the sun sprayed its cancerous beams to the nubile breasts of ignorant undergraduates, about whom we concocted elaborate fantasies, curtains sprayed with whipped cream, a window cracked by the foot of a climaxing lass. But those unworthy dreams passed as our destiny was pronounced by the thick, somber volumes lining the walls of the atomized atrium. They were good old tomes, instructive, remonstrative, bewildering, upbuilding, though to this day there is no clear landing pad, no uniform to wriggle into, no slogan to stand under while feverishly berating the others. Rather the hangar is open to the winds, clouds pass over the plains of red dust, and sometimes an animal strolls by the open door—once a bird flew in, but it arced back around and departed without incident. I stepped out of the building’s cool interior and into the bleaching sun, and as I stared at some grasses, which were being tossed by a warm wind, I recalled the time Chad shouted, “Memory is a phantasm!” into the suburban summer night. He took a swig from a can of Miller Lite, and he bounced gingerly on the diving board of his parents’ illuminated pool. I never understood where that comment came from—he’d never spoken that way before, and he drowned in that very pool four days later. I was managing an Office Max at the time.



INDESTRUCTIBLE OBJECT
We pummeled it. We battered it, scratched and slapped it, stomped it and punted it into the sun-streaked air. Nigel stole his dad’s .22 and we took potshots at it in the lot behind the Safeway. We let a terrier chomp on it. An old man with a yellow beard and a Syd Barrett tee shirt lay stretched on the lawn. He watched our efforts propped up on an elbow. He laughed the secret laugh of one who has come to know futility. This only pissed us off more: we hurled the object at the brick wall of the Heinz factory, we tossed it into the Chesapeake Bay (it floated) and we piloted a cigarette boat back and forth over it. Then we crushed lit cigarettes against it. We vomited champagne on it, and for an entire month we left it alone, thinking time would destroy it. It didn’t. The object endured. The shadows of clouds passed over it. Winds washed across its surface. Fingers of sunlight tickled the object at midday and a game of touch football was played in its vicinity. At one point a man leapt over it and slammed a football to the turf within the endzone. The object remained unmoved. A child approached it and lifted it and then dropped it into the polluted canal, but it bobbed in the water and coursed confidently down the stream as the sun set and the complaints of gulls wove through the rust-speckled girders of the drawbridge. From my turret, I glimpsed it in the water, and I focused all of my mind’s destructive powers on it—I tried to concentrate, and I tried—as hard as I could—to cause it to combust. No chance. It not only rebuffed my efforts, it appeared to be cleaner, more attractive. For the first time I felt the desire to retrieve it, to embrace it, to give it a name—that’s when it vanished over the falls.

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